Summary

This data collection effort was undertaken to determine
whether accurate and comprehensive pretrial data can be collected at
the local level and subsequently aggregated at the state and federal
levels. The data contained in this collection provide a picture of
felony defendants' movements through the criminal courts. Offenses were
recoded into 14 broad categories that conform to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics' crime definitions. Other variables include sex, race, age,
prior record, relationship to criminal justice system at the time of
the offense, pretrial release, detention decisions, court appearances,
pretrial rearrest, adjudication, and sentencing. The unit of analysis
is the defendant.

Geographic Coverage

Restrictions

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes

Sample

In a two-stage sampling process, the first stage was a
stratified sample to select 39 of the 75 most populous counties, and
the second stage was a systematic sample of defendants based on felony
filings within each selected county.

Universe

Felony court filings during February 1988 in the 75 most
populous counties in the United States.

Data Source

National Pretrial Reporting Program official data
collection instrument

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1991-05-03

Version Date

2013-06-12

Version History

1991-05-03 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

2013-06-12 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.

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Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of
the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its
components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this website (including, without limitation,
its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).